Paula Yates

In 1979, Yates began her career as a music journalist with a column called "Natural Blonde" in the Record Mirror, shortly after posing for Penthouse magazine. She first came to prominence in the 1980s as co-presenter (with Jools Holland) of the Channel 4 pop music programme The Tube. She also appeared alongside her friend Jennifer Saunders in 1987 for a spoof documentary on pop group Bananarama. In 1982, she released a version of the Nancy Sinatra hit song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" from the Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One album by B.E.F. (British Electric Foundation). Yates became known for her "on the bed" interviews on The Big Breakfast, where she casually asked the questions she felt people really wanted the answers to. She met Geldof in the early days of the Boomtown Rats, and they began a romantic relationship in 1976. Their first daughter, Fifi, was born in 1983. After ten years together, Yates and Geldof married on 31 August 1986 in Las Vegas, with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran as best man. The couple then had two more daughters, Peaches Geldof on 13 March 1989, and Pixie on 17 September 1990. Whilst married to Geldof, Yates had a year-long affair with American singer Terence Trent D'Arby and a six-year long affair with actor Rupert Everett.

In 1985, Yates met INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence while interviewing him for The Tube. During this appearance, Yates reportedly told him, "I'm going to have that boy [Hutchence]". Yates began showing up at INXS gigs everywhere. Their affair was under way for some months before their Big Breakfast interview in October 1994. Geldof and Yates divorced in May 1996. On 22 July 1996, Yates gave birth to a daughter by Hutchence, Tiger Lily. On 22 November 1997, Hutchence was found dead in a hotel room in Sydney. Yates became distraught, refusing to accept the coroner's verdict of suicide and insisting that it was a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation. In December 1997, a DNA test confirmed that Jess Yates was not her biological father; the test proved Hughie Green was her biological father. In June 1998, Geldof won full custody of the couple's three daughters after Yates attempted suicide. On 17 September 2000, on Pixie's 10th birthday, Yates died at her home in Notting Hill at the age of 41 of a heroin overdose. The coroner ruled that it was not a suicide, but a result of "foolish and incautious" behaviour. She was discovered in the presence of her then-four-year-old daughter, Tiger Lily. On 7 April 2014, Yates's second-oldest daughter, Peaches Geldof, also died of a heroin overdose, aged 25.